


Unwelcome in Corus

by devilinthedetails



Category: PIERCE Tamora - Works, Tortall - Tamora Pierce
Genre: Bazhir, Bazhir Culture, Corus, Discrimination, Gen, Racism
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-26
Updated: 2020-10-26
Packaged: 2021-03-08 20:00:06
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,969
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27212314
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/devilinthedetails/pseuds/devilinthedetails
Summary: Zahir and his father are unwelcome in Corus.
Comments: 2
Kudos: 13





	Unwelcome in Corus

**Author's Note:**

> Going with a somewhat softer and less stern version of Zahir's father this time (because the One Sentence Weeks event made me realize I kind of like the idea of a less stern father for Zahir) and also using Baba as an affectionate term for "father" or "papa" among the Bazhir. Also deciding that Jon maybe did bring his heir to the desert sometimes like a responsible king, Voice, and father since I don't remember anything in canon that would contradict him doing that. So I'll give Jon the benefit of the doubt in that. And that is more than enough author's notes for now.

Unwelcome in Corus

Zahir had never been so far north as Corus. In fact, he had never left the great desert his people had called home for a thousand generations stretching back to the time only the Voice could remember when it hadn’t been a desert but lush green ground.

Everything he had encountered on the long dirt road north had been a revelation to him. The hills of rock instead of dunes of sand. The forests and woodlands teeming with creatures he had never seen before and trees that seemed to touch the blue bowl of the arching sky above.. The babbling brooks and flowing streams that were nothing at all like tranquil desert oases. The miles of emerald grass, the meadows dotted with a rainbow of flowers, and the fields of golden grain.

His father–his baba-- was the chief of his tribe, and he had been to Persopolis, so he had thought that Corus might seem familiar to him. Some aspects of it were familiar. The merchants from Tyra haggling in the marketplaces to secure the best deals on goods they would carry home for trading or to get the highest price on products they had brought to the market themselves. The vendors hawking their wares at passerby.

However, what made Zahir tense and uneasy–was how the familiar things were altered so as to become unfamiliar. The streets and markets of Corus were bustling with people from places with names that tripped his tongue–Carthak, Tusaine, Maren, Scarna, and the Copper Isles–but somehow he and his baba, who had accompanied him on this ride north to begin his page training, were drawing hostile, speculative stares from vendors and customers, foreigners and Tortallans, alike. The only thing that seemed to unite these diverse people was that they hated and distrusted the Bazhir who had wandered into this city where they were clearly as unwelcome among the population as lung rot.

The foods the vendors thrust at passerby to try to entice a purchase were entirely different from the ones he had seen in Persopolis. They weren’t the kebabs of tender lamb and goat interspersed with roasted vegetables and spiced with cumin, coriander, and turmeric sold on the streets of Perspolis. They were strange foods he had never tasted or smelled before, and his stomach roiled at the onslaught of these unrecognizable odors. Northerners certainly had strange diets. No doubt he would be sick for the first days of page training trying to adjust to what northerners called food.

Zahir’s baba looked as ill at ease and as out of place as Zahir felt, but still Zahir was glad that his father had accompanied him north. It made him feel less alone.

“Raven Armory should be just around this corner.” Baba consulted his map, squinted at the buildings surrounding them, and then pointed down a street to their right. Before they’d ridden north, Baba had asked a merchant in a trading caravan passing through the desert to mark where Raven Armory was located on his map of Corus, and the merchant had done so.

Riding silently beside his baba, Zahir steered his beautiful new bay around the corner his father had indicated and saw three doors down a shop with swords and daggers in its window displays that made it clear to anyone with eyes that it was Raven Armory. According to all the merchants who traveled through their tribal lands en route to Persopolis and Tyra or returning from such destinations, Raven Armory was the best and most expensive armory in Tortall. Even the wealthiest and most blue-blooded of nobles might only be able to afford a dagger or a polishing cloth from the exclusive armory.

It was a mark of rarefied status–of belonging–among the Tortallans to own anything from Raven Armory and it could be passed along from generation to generation as a treasured family heirloom. His baba might never have touched a blade or a polishing cloth from Raven Armory, but he could understand belonging and legacy. More than that, Zahir knew in his blood and bone, that his baba wanted what was best for him–to be able to declare before the world, Bazhir and northerner alike, that he had worked hard to provide his only son with the best.

“Then we’ll get you a perfect polishing cloth,” Baba went on in a cheery tone that said he was unnerved by Zahir’s solemn silence. He smiled and reached out to ruffle Zahir’s hair as he always did when his son’s quiet disconcerted him. “You can show it to the other pages, and they will be impressed. And one day you will be able to pass it along to your own son, yes?”

“Yes, Baba.” Zahir gave the answer he knew his baba wanted, his nod more dutiful than excited. He was settling into a cold, aloof demeanor to conceal and combat how awkward and unwelcome he felt in this city that was supposed to be capital of his country. This city that reminded him that to be a Bazhir was always to be considered an outcast anywhere beyond the borders of the desert.

They had arrived outside the guarded door of Raven Armory. They dismounted and tied their horses to an iron stake planted in the street in front of the store. As they passed the sentries on duty beside the door, the guards eyed them warily as if to proclaim that they would be watching these potential Bazhir thieves very closely indeed and wouldn’t hesitate to summon the Provost’s Guard if given the slightest excuse to do so.

“May I help you?” A clerk waiting just inside the door greeted them with words that might have been polite if his expression didn’t suggest he couldn’t fathom how two savage sand scuts had blown into such a respectable establishment.

“We’re looking for a polishing cloth for my son.” Baba’s lip slid into the ingratiating grin–the grin that begged for acceptance that would never come–that he offered all northerners he encountered. Zahir’s blood boiled with shame to see a Bazhir chief seeking the favor of a simple Corus clerk and he wanted to roll his eyes at Baba’s naked need for acceptance from those who would forever mistrust and despise the Bazhir. “We hear you have the best polishing cloths at Raven Armory, yes?”

There it was again, Zahir thought with the irritated feeling of salt rubbed in a wound. The tentative question at the end of what should have been a definite, confident statement.

“We do have the best polishing cloths in the realm if you can afford them.” The haughty emphasis the clerk placed on the final words conveyed that he very much doubted any Bazhir had the coins to afford the polishing clothes for sale at this armory.

“We can afford them.” Zahir bristled at the clerk’s implication, speaking up because he was tired of letting his cringing, people–pleasing baba do the talking for them. Arrogance and aloofness, not politeness, was the language of the northerners. The only way to communicate with these beings who were convinced they were better than the Bazhir. “Show us your finest, most expensive polishing clothes and be quick about it. We have other business to attend to this morning.”

The clerk shot him a resentful glare at being addressed so curtly but was nevertheless spurred into instant action. He led Zahir and his baba to a shelf displaying the most luxurious selection of polished cloths Zahir could have imagined existing anywhere in the world. He described as if by rote the merits of each of the most expensive polishing cloths on the shelf, and somewhat overwhelmed by the selection but determined not to show it to this man who looked down his nose at the Bazhir, made his choice as his baba had promised he could.

The polishing cloth paid for to the barely hid consternation of the clerk, Zahir stepped out of the armory and onto the street. As they untied and climbed onto their horses, Zahir had to trample the urge to stick out his tongue at the guards standing at the door to Raven Armory. Gloating would be satisfying–it eternally was–but Baba would cuff his ears and scold him for inviting trouble to dine in his tent if he caught Zahir sticking his tongue out at any northern guards.

Baba remembered the years of raging war between the northerners and the Bazhir. He preferred this uneasy, lying peace to the open, bloody conflict of those days, and he was forever reluctant to invite trouble to dine in his tent. He would rather be dishonored, Zahir thought bitterly, than invite trouble to dine in his tent, which meant Zahir would be pushing his luck if he risked sticking out his tongue at the guards.

Better to quit while he was ahead and had the last laugh of the ignorant northerners, riding off in a whirlwind of dust kicked up by his mare’s clopping hooves, his nose in the air. The guards could eat the dust from his horse as he and his baba disappeared down the street to the Royal Palace where he would begin his page training in what Baba had gone to great expense to ensure was style.

“You must find a way to relate to these northerners, son.” Baba’s remark raised a frown on Zahir’s forehead. “The Voice said many times when you were young that you should come north to train as a knight. He wanted you to be the first knight from our tribe, and that is an honor for you–for our family.”

Zahir remembered what Baba had reminded him of too many times to count on this journey north. He remembered the Voice who was also king of Tortall visiting his tribe and his family’s tent. He remembered the archery and riding competitions between the tribe boys that had been performed to celebrate the Voice’s presence among them. He remembered that he had finished first in those competitions, outperforming boys years older than him because they weren’t as determined and fearless as him. He remembered the Voice smiling at him, teeth a dazzling pearl-white in the blinding, burning sun, and comenting to his baba that Zahir should train as a knight when he turned ten. That he should become the first knight from his tribe. That he should serve the Crown.

The Voice, Zahir recalled somewhat inconsequentially, had been accompanied by his own small son. A quiet, grave boy who only spoke when addressed. A boy with oasis blue eyes who drank in everything as if it were water. A boy with coal black hair whom they said was the Crown Prince of Tortall. The tiny child tagging along behind his father who would be king when the Voice was dead. A reserved boy who embodied an uncertain future for northerners and Bazhir being introduced to the desert for what Zahir supposed must have been the first time.

The boy–the Voice’s son–must have been about Zahir’s age. Would Zahir see him again in page training?

It seemed a foolish thing to wonder about, and Zahir almost chided himself for doing so before it occurred to him that maybe he was meant to meet that boy again in page training. Perhaps that was what his baba and the Voice had planned for him. Maybe they wanted him to know the prince who would one day be king of Tortall.

Zahir didn’t know. He didn’t know much about life in the north, truth be told, but he would watch, learn, and judge. He would ferret out all the secrets of the north and return to the desert with them. He would become someone unafraid to inhabit two worlds.


End file.
